Recently, I thought about the investment logic of gold and copper, and found that the differences are actually quite significant.

Many people think that gold is just a store of value, but what truly allows gold to maintain a long-term premium are two core factors. First is the rigidity of supply; gold mining costs are high, and extraction is difficult, with very limited capacity expansion. More importantly, after thousands of years of historical accumulation, gold has formed a globally recognized consensus. This hard constraint on supply combined with a deep foundation of consensus gives gold’s value support far beyond that of other commodities.

Copper is completely different. As an industrial metal, copper price fluctuations are mainly linked to economic cycles and capacity expansion. When the economy is doing well, capacity keeps up, and copper prices tend to peak; during economic downturns, demand shrinks, and copper prices fall accordingly. This cyclical characteristic determines that copper’s price ceiling is relatively clear, lacking the long-term premium sustainability that gold has.

What should gold not touch? Essentially, it must not lose that global consensus. Once the consensus wavers, the logic of gold’s premium will be broken. But because this consensus has been accumulated over thousands of years, it’s almost impossible to shake it. That’s why gold can exist as the ultimate safe-haven asset. In contrast, copper doesn’t need support from consensus at all; as long as someone values it, it has worth. So its logic is even simpler and more straightforward—just follow the economic cycle.